Thereupon the charioteer arose and donned his yeoman's
suit for charioteering. Of this yeoman's suit for
charioteering, this is what he put on him: His soft kirtle
of skin which was light and airy, which was smooth and
sparkling, which was stitched and of buckskin, so that it
hindered not the movements of his arms outside. Over that he
put outside an over-mantle of raven's feathers, which Simon
Magus had made as a gift for Darius Nero, king of the
Romans. Darius bestowed it upon Conchobar; Conchobar gave it
to Cuchulain; Cuchulain presented it to his charioteer.

The same charioteer took the crested, plated,
four-bordered battle-cap with variety of every colour and
every figure, reaching down over the middle of his shoulders
behind. It was an adornment for him and not an encumbrance.
With his hand he placed the red-yellow frontlet-- like one
red-golden strip of glowing gold smelted over the edge of an
anvil-- on his forehead as a token of charioteering, to
distinguish him from his master. He opened the hobbles that
fastened his steeds and grasped his gold-mounted goad in his
right hand. In his left hand he seized the lines, that is,
the bridle-reins of his horses for restraining his steeds
before performing his charioteering.

He next threw the iron-sheathed gold-bedecked coats of
mail over his horses, so that they covered them from
forehead to forehand. The chariot was studded with dartlets,
lancelets, spearlets, and hardened spits, so that every
portion of the frame bristled with points in that chariot
and every corner and end and point and face of that chariot
was a passage of laceration.

Then cast he a spell of concealment over his horses and
over his fellow, so that they were not visible to any one in
the camp, while all in the camp were visible to them. Well
indeed was it that he cast that charm, for on that day the
charioteer had to perform the three gifts of charioteership,
namely leaping over a cleft in the ranks, unerring driving,
and the handling of the goad.

Then arose the champion and battle-warrior and the
instrument of Badb's corpse-fold among the men of the earth,
Cuchulain son of Sualtaim, and he donned his war-dress of
battle and fight and combat. To that wardress of battle and
fight and combat which he put about him belonged seven and
twenty waxed, board-like, equally close skin-tunics which
were girded by cords and swathings and ropes on his fair
skin, to the end that his wit and reason might not become
deranged when the violence of his nature came over him.

Over him he put on the outside his battle-girdle of a
champion, of tough, tanned, stout leather cut from the
forequarters of seven ox-hides of yearlings, so that it
reached from the slender parts of his waist to the stout
part under his arm-pits. He was used to wear it to keep off
spears and points and irons and lances and arrows. For in
like manner they would bound back from it as if from stone
or rock or horn they rebounded. Then he took his silken,
glossy trews with their band of spotted pale-gold against
the soft lower parts of his loins. His brown, well-sewn kilt
of brown leather from the shoulders of four ox-hides of
yearlings with his battle-girdle of cow-skins, he put
underneath over the shining silken trews on the outside.

Then the king-warrior seized his battle-arms of battle
and fight and combat. This is what belonged to those warlike
weapons of battle: He took his eight little swords together
with the bright-faced, tusk-hilted straight-sword; he took
his eight little spears besides his five-pronged spear, he
took his eight little darts together with his javelin with
its walrus-tooth ornaments; he took his eight little shafts
along with his play-staff; he took his eight shields for
feats together with his dark-red bent-shield, whereon a
show-boar could lie in its hollow boss, with its very sharp
razor-like, keen-cutting, hard iron rim all around it, so
that it would cut a hair against the stream because of its
sharpness and fineness and keenness. When the young warrior
would perform the edge-feat withal, it was the same whether
he cut with his shield or his spear or his sword.

Next he put round his head his crested war-helm of battle
and fight and combat, whereout was uttered the cry of an
hundred young warriors with the long-drawn wail from each of
its angles and corners. For this was the way that the
fiends, the goblins and the sprites of the glens and the
demons of the air screamed before and above and around him,
what time he went forth for the shedding of blood of heroes
and champions, exulting in the mighty deeds wrought
underneath it.

His veil of concealment was thrown over him then, of
raiment from Tir Tairngirè ('the Land of Promise')
which had been brought to him as a gift by Manannan son of
Ler ('the Sea') from the king of Tir na Sorcha ('the Land of
Light.')

Then took place the first twisting-fit and rage of the
royal hero Cuchulain, so that he made a terrible,
many-shaped, wonderful, unheard of thing of himself. His
flesh trembled about him like a pole against the torrent or
like a bulrush against the stream, every member and every
joint and every point and every knuckle of him from crown to
ground. He made a mad whirling-feat of his body within his
hide. His feet and his shins and his knees slid so that they
came behind him. His heels and his calves and his hams
shifted so that they passed to the front. The muscles of his
calves moved so that they came to the front of his shins, so
that each huge knot was the size of a soldier's balled fist.
He stretched the sinews of his head so that they stood out
on the nape of his neck, hill-like lumps, huge,
incalculable, vast, immeasurable and as large as the head of
a month-old child.

He next made a ruddy bowl of his face and his
countenance. He gulped down one eye into his head so that it
would be hard work if a wild crane succeeded in drawing it
out on to the middle of his cheek from the rear of his
skull. Its mate sprang forth till it came out on his cheek.
His mouth was distorted monstrously. He drew the cheek from
the jaw-bone so that the interior of his throat was to be
seen. His lungs and his lights stood out so that they
fluttered in his mouth and his gullet. He struck a mad
lion's blow with the upper jaw on its fellow so that as
large as a wether's fleece of a three year old was each red,
fiery flake which his teeth forced into his mouth from his
gullet.

There was heard the loud clap of his heart against his
breast like the yelp of a howling bloodhound or like a lion
going among bears. There were seen the torches of the Badb,
and the rain clouds of poison, and the sparks of glowing-red
fire, blazing and flashing in hazes and mists over his head
with the seething of the truly wild wrath that rose up above
him. His hair bristled all over his head like branches of a
redthorn thrust into a gap in a great hedge. Had a king's
apple-tree laden with royal fruit been shaken around him,
scarce an apple of them all would have passed over him to
the ground, but rather would an apple have stayed stuck on
each single hair there, for the twisting of the anger which
met it as it rose from his hair above him.

The Lon Laith ('Champion's Light') stood out of his
forehead, so that it was as long and as thick as a warrior's
whetstone. As high, as thick, as strong, as steady, as long
as the sail-tree of some huge prime ship was the straight
spout of dark blood which arose right on high from the very
ridge-pole of his crown, so that a black fog of witchery was
made thereof like to the smoke from a king's hostel what
time the king comes to be ministered to at nightfall of a
winter's day.

When now this contortion had been completed in Cuchulain,
then it was that the hero of valour sprang into his scythed
war-chariot, with its iron sickles, its thin blades, its
hooks and its hard spikes, with its hero's fore-prongs, with
its opening fixtures, with its stinging nails that were
fastened to the poles and thongs and bows and lines of the
chariot.

It was then he delivered over his chariot the
thunder-feat of a hundred and the thunder-feat of two
hundred and the thunder-feat of three hundred and the
thunder-feat of four hundred, and he ceased at the
thunder-feat of five hundred. For he did not deem it too
much that such a great number should fall by his hand at his
first onset and first battle-assault on four of the five
grand provinces of Erin. In such wise fared he forth for to
seek his foes, and he drove his chariot in a wide circuit
round about the hosts of the four grand provinces of Erin.
And he led his chariot a heavy way.

The chariot's iron wheels sank into the ground so that
the earth dug up by the iron wheels might have served for a
dûn and a fortress, so did the chariot's iron wheels
cut into the ground. For in like manner the clods and
boulders and rocks and the clumps and the shingle of the
earth arose up outside on a height with the iron wheels. It
was for this cause he made this circling hedge of the Badb
round about the hosts of four of the five grand provinces of
Erin, that they might not escape him nor get away before he
would come on them to press a reprisal for the boys. And he
went into the midst of the ranks and mowed down huge walls
of the corpses of his foes and enemies and opponents in a
great circle round about the host.

And he made the onslaught of a foe amongst foes upon
them, so that they fell sole to sole, neck to neck, such was
the closeness of their bodies. Thrice again in this manner
he circled them round, so that he left them in beds of six
in a great ring around them, even the soles of three to the
backs of three men in a circle around the camp. Hence
Sessrech Bresligè ('Great sixfold Slaughter') is the
name of this event on the Tain, and it is one of the three
unreckonable events of the Tain, which were, to wit,
Sessrech Bresligè, Immsligè Glennamnach ('the
Mutual Slaying at Glennamain') and the battle of Garech and
Ilgarech; only that here, hound and horse and man were one
to him.

Ten and six-score kings, leaders and men of the land,
Cuchulain laid low in the great slaughter on the Plain of
Murthemne, besides a countless horde of dogs and horses and
women and boys and children and common folk; for there
escaped not a third man of the men of Erin without a lump or
without having half his skull or an eye hurt, or without an
enduring mark for the course of his life.